Painted in Blood by Ilaria Tuti

Author:Ilaria Tuti [Tuti, Ilaria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474609647
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

47

Francesco di Lenardo was standing with one hand on his hip and the other shielding his eyes from the rays of the sinking sun, when he saw them coming towards him in the distance. He skipped down the flank of the mountain with astonishing agility for a man his age and soon he had reached the road that coiled through the forest, the mountain on one side and the drop to the river on the other. The road was so narrow there was barely room enough for a single car to pass through. When he reached Teresa and Marini, he wasn’t even out of breath.

‘I’ll walk with you,’ he volunteered once Teresa had explained they’d come specifically to see him.

To glimpse the face of the killer they were hunting today, they would have to dig much deeper into the past. They needed Francesco’s memories again.

They walked in silence, the shadows lengthening around their footsteps. Nearing its end now, the day had become imbued with a gleaming splendour. Birds flew back and forth across the sky, whole flocks changing direction without warning. Their flight was perfectly synchronised as if they were a single organism.

Francesco stopped to watch. They had come to a halt at a section of the road where the wall of trees in the adjacent forest was briefly interrupted, only to begin again a few yards down.

‘An old firebreak,’ he said, offering no further explanation.

Teresa had met people like him before, as solitary as the old larch tree that towered over the meadow a few turns down the road. She knew he needed time. If they insisted now, if they tried to rush him, he would simply retreat further into himself.

A young man emerged from a path among the trees, carrying a backpack on his shoulder and wearing a T-shirt tied around his head like a bandanna. His face looked flushed and tanned already, though it was only spring.

Francesco waved at him.

‘This is Sandro, Krisnja’s sweetheart,’ he explained, greeting the young man with a hug.

Sandro looked down.

‘Yes, well, I’m her boyfriend,’ he said with a sheepish laugh.

Teresa remembered him from the community meeting they had all attended.

‘Sandro wasn’t born in the valley, but he might as well have been,’ said Francesco. ‘He’s studying for his forestry diploma.’

The young man put his hands up as if to hide behind them.

‘Mostly, I spend my time sampling the circumference of alder trees,’ he said.

They all laughed. Sandro bid them farewell and continued on his way towards the valley. Francesco’s gaze followed him until he disappeared round a bend in the road.

‘Many have left,’ he said quietly, ‘but others have come to take their place. We could do with more young people like Sandro, for the valley and for the forest. Some day it’ll be Sandro looking after these woods. Right now, he’s learning that it’s important not to reforest every clearing, that it’s useful to leave the odd dead tree in the undergrowth for the scavengers to feast on. He understands how

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